Doing Business with Tyrants
January 9, 2019
How can people enjoy a corporate retreat knowing they are near a vast
indoctrination camp for ethnic Uighurs? Lawrence Davidson analyzes
capitalist conditioning in response to a New York Times article about
McKinsey & Co.
By Lawrence Davidson
TothePointAnalysis.com
On the front page of The New York Times of Dec. 16, 2018, above the fold,
there is a long article entitled "Turning Tyranny into a Client." It tells
how the management, and a good part of the staff, of McKinsey & Co., a
worldwide management firm, goes about the business of burnishing the
reputations and increasing the wealth of some of the nastiest tyrants on the
planet. Simultaneously, the company publicly claims to be creating "tens of
thousands of jobs, improving lives, providing education" and generally
"making a positive difference to the businesses and communities" which
engage their services. How much of these claims are simply a cover for
making huge profits by facilitating corruption is one of the things the
article explores.
This scenario is not an unusual one. Most large corporate structures dealing
internationally find themselves assisting tyrannical governments and their
corrupt leaders-it is just a matter of degree. McKinsey & Co., for their
part, may be into it big time.
Indeed, there is further aspect to this story, and it is introduced through
the article's description of this McKinsey & Co.'s 2018 retreat. Here it is:
"hundreds of the company's consultants frolicked in the desert, riding
camels over sand dunes and mingling in tents linked by red carpets." And
where was this occurring? In "Kashgar, the ancient Silk Road city in China's
far west." Kashgar is also a place that is "experiencing a major
humanitarian crisis. About four miles from where the McKinsey consultants
discussed their work, which includes advising some of China's most important
state-owned companies, a sprawling internment camp had sprung up to hold
thousands of ethnic Uighurs-part of a vast archipelago of indoctrination
camps where the Chinese government has locked up as many as one million
people."
Not Bothered by Political Backdrop
As far as the NYT's reporters could tell, the "frolicking" company
consultants were not bothered by this "political backdrop" to their
otherwise "Disney-like adventure." Obviously this speaks to a collective
mindset wherein ethical awareness has been rationalized away. I think this
situation deserves a closer analysis.
Kashgar, ancient Silk Road city in far west of China. (Wikimedia)
Why would "hundreds of the company's consultants" apparently be immune to
the horrors within, if you will, an easy camel's ride from their retreat?
More generally, why apparently would they be indifferent to the corruption
their employer, and themselves, may well be facilitating?
Here are some possible parts to the answer:
Capitalist Culture
Consider that the pervasive economic environment in the West, from which
most of the consultants come from or were educated, is one of increasingly
unregulated capitalism. Their educations equated success with the procuring
of "a good job." That is certainly what college nowadays is all about-to get
the highest-paying starting job one's career choice can offer. We acquire
this definition of success from the cultural agents all around us: from our
parents, our peers, our business, political and social leaders, and from the
media. Thus almost all of us are set up from birth to be potential McKinsey
employees.
Linguistic Environment.
Given our economic culture, no one should be surprised that the language the
consultants, and the rest of us, presently speak is "a late-capitalist
language." This language "narrows our conceptual horizons" and thereby
"makes it more difficult to conceive alternative ways of organizing our
economy and society." If you would like to learn how this works, I recommend
a new book by John Patrick Leary, "Keywords: The New Language of
Capitalism."
One recent example of this language problem arose when General Motors
announced in November 2018 the imminent laying off of more than 14,000
workers. The CEO of General Motors, Mary Barra, explained the move in the
following words: "The actions we are taking today continues our
transformation to be highly agile, resilient, and profitable, while giving
us the flexibility to invest in the future." The ruination of 14,000 lives
becomes a prerequisite for an "investment in the future" and testimony of
growing agility and resilience. Her language paints reprobate behavior as
economic virtue. Actually, there is an echo of the Ford Pinto scandal here.
In that case, the ability to prevent deaths caused by a recognizedly
dangerous auto gas tank design was ignored. Later, the decision was
justified in the language of cost-benefit analysis.
Lack of Education in Ethics
This sort of reasoning is not unexpected. Thus, there is nothing in present
Western education to contest the language that rationalizes this sort of
thinking. In other words, there is a lack of ethical standards that, in
practice, call into question the capitalist worldview of someone like Mary
Barra. So, you can find business courses galore in higher education, but
Marvin Bower, "founder of modern-day McKinsey and its corporate culture,"
according to Wikipedia. (McKinsey & Co.)
ethics courses are rare-and even when you can find them they do not
necessarily address themselves to market practices. In the lower grades and
high school the subject of ethics, like sex, is thought to be an
inappropriate one for the classroom. We are supposed to pick up our ethics
from our parents and/or religion. That means acquiring ethical standards is
catch-as-catch-can. But learning to think in terms of, and navigate in, a
capitalist world is the sine qua non of success.
Group Pressure
We are communal animals, and most of us assimilate into a series of groups
as we age. Our workplace community is one of these. The process of
assimilation to such groups, especially when there is no countervailing
influence (such as a union) creates the box outside of which we rarely look.
Thus, "normal" cultural behavior is group behavior.
This is probably what is going on with the many of the McKinsey consultants.
The longer they stay with the company, the more they assimilate into its
culture, which, as we have seen, takes a strong rationalizing stand that its
employees are helping their clients to develop along progressive lines. The
NYT article quotes Calvert W. Jones, a University of Maryland professor, who
"crisscrossed the Gulf monarchies in the Middle East as part of her research
evaluating the work of management consultants." She explains the McKinsey
consultants' behavior this way: "In the beginning, the best of them want to
help, want to do real research, provide data and expert opinions. But after
initially speaking their minds [about questionable behavior] . they
gradually stop. They engage in the art of not speaking truth to power. They
self-censor, exaggerate successes and downplay their own misgivings due to
the incentive structures they face." For those who buy into McKinsey's
cultural box, ethical standards are ultimately derived from company's
rationalizations.
The McKinsey consultants remind me of professional soldiers or diplomats, or
any of us who serve an authority on which our livelihood depends. You must
often learn the proper rationalizations to explain away, to yourself and
others, the consequences of your behavior. Too much independent thinking,
too much questioning of orders and you're out.
However, once you have merged your standards with those of the institution,
once its image is your image, you are safe-safe in your faith in the
rationalizations that now guide your working life. At that point you can
frolic almost anywhere with a "good conscience."
Lawrence Davidson is professor of history emeritus at West Chester
University in Pennsylvania. He has been publishing his analyses of topics in
U.S. domestic and foreign policy, international and humanitarian law and
Israel/Zionist practices and policies since